As you may have read in the earlier blog posts, one of the things that makes a chocolate and beer tasting great is the fact that it is unusual, yet it works! Even people who say they don’t like beer, often do like chocolate so everyone can enjoy the event.
Last week’s Craft:Beer+Food event was a huge hit, the pairings were sublime. If you weren’t able to attend, fret not, as a sequel to this delightful affair is anticipated. After Craft:Beer+Food comes the next big thing, BitterSweet:Beer+Chocolate. It is a non-profit happening that enables local breweries to showcase their beers along with the remarkable chocolates of Seattle’s own Theo Chocolate.
BitterSweet:Beer+Chocolate presents the connection between craft beer and artisan chocolate. This event showcases beer paired with chocolate and even beer made with chocolate. Sound interesting, eh? Eight of the Seattle area’s most renowned brewers are taking part in BitterSweet. As expected, they will be providing beer from their regular listings coupled with products from Theo Chocolate, which will be collaborating with them. In addition, they will also be producing new beers just for this event.
Chocolate makers and confectioners from Theo are the ones held responsible for the pairings. For those who haven’t tried this before, head to Theo Chocolate in Fremont and taste the marvelous list of products that they are offering. Their mouthwatering goods are worth your time and effort!
There was a different vibe when the team of brewers was introduced to their counterparts at Theo Chocolate, a good vibe, specifically. Amazingly, they speak the same language and share the same passion for their craft. With the use of chocolate from Theo and byproducts from the chocolate-making process, the brewers plan on making innovative, fresh, and original world-class beers.
Save the date as doing anything else will only make you, as the cliché goes, miss half of your life. Get to experience it and walk away amazed.
Although wine is pleasurable all its own, most people pair it with an array of different foods as it magnifies the tastes of those food. But did you know that wine and chocolate make a good pair? When the combination is created correctly, it gives a divine blast of taste in the mouth.
First and foremost, you need to make an appropriate choice of chocolate. Grabbing any chocolate bar available won’t be enough as they don’t hold distinctive flavors. Gourmet chocolates are your best bet, be it dark, white, or milk chocolate.
With regard to the wine you’ll be pairing the chocolate with, you need to find one that is at least as sweet as the chocolate, maybe even slightly sweeter. One of the main rules in pairing them is that the distance between wine and chocolate sweetness should always be short because if the wine isn’t sweet enough, the sour notes of wine will make it appear hollow, which makes it a horrible combination.
Red wines generally pair with chocolate easier than white wines. The acidity of Champagne and sparkling wines reacts with chocolate causing a bitter taste, but that doesn’t mean they can’t go along well together. Like I said, correct combination is key.
One main rule in this pairing is light chocolate tastes better with lighter-bodied wines. Simply put, the stronger the flavor of the chocolate, the more full-bodied wine you need for that perfect combination. Another thing to consider is the quality of wine as bad wine only gets worse when paired with chocolate.
Always taste the wine first! Only then should you start enjoying your chocolate. Drinking the wine before eating chocolate will allow you to assess the flavor and taste of the wine itself. Otherwise, your mouth and taste buds will be covered with a thin layer of cocoa butter, preventing you from tasting the wine.
It was once taboo, but pairing wine with chocolate is now becoming commonplace that some people have this particular pair as their comfort food!
If you would like to dig in deeper, consider enrolling as a student of Chocolate University Online. There are several lessons included to help you master wine and chocolate pairings.
Over the last couple of centuries, the cacao bean been has been used in many different ways such as medicine, as money, etc. But today, we eat it almost exclusively for pleasure.
There are different varieties of cacao beans and it has been said that each strain has been significantly changed due to its tree’s ability to naturally cross-pollinate, not to mention all the intended hybridization of the cacao bean for the past centuries.
Cacao beans go through a lot of processing to produce the chocolate we all love. They are harvested, fermented, dried, roasted, and ground to make chocolate liquor, which is then further processed into cocoa solids and cocoa butter.
Chocolatiers or the chocolate makers use these cacao beans or the cocoa mass to produce pure chocolate, which they call “couverture”. This is what they make their confections from.
To make the chocolate, the chocolate liquor is incorporated into cocoa butter and sugar. And these chocolates are categorized based on the amount of the chocolate liquor that was put into it.
The categories said are the following: Dark chocolate, which is known for its bittersweet taste, contains the highest quantity of chocolate liquor. Milk chocolates, which are made with milk ingredients, contain less chocolate liquor. While white chocolate, which is technically not real chocolate since cocoa solid content is zero, is made from cocoa butter, sugar and milk.
A few years back, Scharffen Berger started the style listing the percentage of cocoa mass on labels so people would determine how dark is dark. And within each category, characteristics are all laid down such as the type of cacao beans used, the maker and chocolatier, etc.
Chocolate and wine are known to be a perfect combination. Dark chocolates typically go well with stronger fruity red wines. Milk and white chocolates are often best with white and rosé wines. Just see to it that the chocolate is not as sweet as the wine.
Ports (sweet dark red dessert wine) are also known to be a good partner of chocolate. Tawny ports are preferred over vintage ones as the latter overwhelms the chocolate rather than complementing it.
Beer and chocolate can go superbly together as well. Think of any beer and pair it with practically any chocolate, keeping in mind that the darker the chocolate is, the better.
You can search this blog for more specific pairings of wine and chocolate as well as beer and chocolate.
Like most people, I crave a sweet treat at the end of a meal. In the summer, when food is generally on the lighter side, I like something sweet but not TOO sweet.
The Milk Chocolate with Toffee has bold buttery and crunchy toffee bits that blend very well with the subtle chocolaty notes and intense creamy flavors of the milk chocolate. The Chardonnay adds more butter and toffee notes with hints of vanilla, apricot, and spice.
I bought both these items at my local grocery store. The 2009 Round Hill Chardonnay was a bargain at $6.49 (on their website it still sells for a reasonable $8.00). I liked the wine by itself, too!
Oh, one more thing. Just recently, a friend of mine asked me how to pronounce Ghirardelli as she had heard at least two different variations. Since I also have had that experience, I went to the ultimate authority. The Ghirardelli website.
According to the company, you should say Gear-ar-delly!
Now go and enjoy your Toffee Gear-ar-delly with the Round Hill Shar-doe-nay!
Breakfast is considered to be the most important meal of the day. This is the best time to eat larger portions of food because you will be able to make use of the calories for energy all throughout the day.
You can easily buy muffins on the shelves of your local bakery or grocery. However, nothing beats homemade muffins.
With a few enhancements, such as simply adding fruit toppings like banana, you are on your way to giving yourself a healthy and delicious delight. Banana is one of the most popular fruits to combine with chocolate. It simply gives you a fruity taste with a twist of chocolate goodness!
Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins
• 2 medium ripe bananas
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup mini-chocolate chips
Puree bananas, eggs, sugar, butter and vanilla until well blended. Add flour, baking powder and cinnamon, mix until just blended. Fold in chips. Spoon into well-greased muffin tins. Bake at 350° for 10 minutes.
Learning to make this tempting treat for your breakfast and snacks is quite simple and it is also be very nutritious. Remember, the best way to this blissful breakfast blessing is to bake them yourself–yummy and healthy!
A few weeks ago I was interviewed for an article with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper. That article appeared in the print version yesterday and online the day before.
There’s some great information about tasting chocolate as well as pairing chocolate and wine. Click this link for the full chocolate and wine article.
At the time of the interview they also captured some video as I gave a 2-minute chocolate tasting. Watch it below.
In the video I talk briefly about tasting a milk chocolate and then a dark chocolate.
It’s tough to get all the details about chocolate tasting in just a couple minutes. That’s one reason to enjoy a comprehensive chocolate education at Chocolate University Online. The first 10 lessons are all about tasting chocolate.
I found a great article from the California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB) offering guidelines for chocolate and cheese pairings.
With all my pairings, I consider matching flavor profiles from the chocolate’s perspective…
Since dark chocolates offer a complex set of flavors, it makes sense that the best matches would be complex, aged cheeses.
And, since milk chocolates are sweet, and have many dairy flavor components, it is recommended you choose buttery, soft cheeses for the best pairing results.
Here are some more detailed recommended pairings from the article:
Pair 80% or higher dark chocolate with Blue cheese
Enjoy chocolate caramels with a beer-washed cheese
Savor dark chocolates and chili peppers with aged Gouda
Combine dark chocolates and almonds with aged Jack
Going against the aged rule-of-thumb, experiment with 60% – 70% dark chocolate and fresh cream cheese
Try milk chocolates with Ricotta or Brie
and, finally…
You can unite dark chocolates and dried fruits with Asiago or Fontina
I admit that I haven’t tried all these combinations, but I’ll have fun crossing them off my to-do list!
It’s an established fact; chocolate pairs well with many foods. Chocolate and nuts, chocolate and caramel, chocolate and fruit; these are all tried and true.
However, many chefs and cooks will quickly point out that chocolate and spice is also a winning combination.
Savory chocolate recipes are becoming very popular in restaurants and spicy ingredients are part of trendy truffles in almost every chocolates shop.
How about a dark chocolate with lemon and basil ganache? Or a milk chocolate with cumin and mint filling? What about a goat cheese truffle? Do these sound weird to you, or simply irresistible?
Let’s talk chocolate and chiles. There are flavor nuances in different varieties of chile peppers that go better with certain types of chocolate. For example, an Ancho chile will enhance a chocolate with herbal or even citrusy notes. A Chipotle, with its smoky flavor, will bring out the bold intensity of a very dark and bittersweet chocolate. Aleppo chiles go great chocolates that have nutty notes, and Aji Panca gives a kick to chocolates with fruity and acidic notes.
If you are willing to explore non-traditional chocolate pairings, you will be in for a pleasant and unique taste experience.
Bryn asked me to make a guest-blogger appearance for today so I decided to write about a Scotch Whisky and chocolate pairing. It seems strange to write this up on Sunday morning, but I assure you this reflects a Saturday evening tasting.
The first time I tried chocolate covered bacon I was surprised to find how much I liked that combination. Recently I received a gift of a couple pieces purchased from a local chocolate shop, Allo Chocolat, here in Waukesha.
The bacon is very crispy and coated in a smooth dark chocolate coating. So, what Scotch would taste good with this? I figured a Scotch that offered a bit of sweetness and some smoky peatiness, but not too strong.
I settled on Ledaig (pronounced “led-chig”), a single malt Scotch Whisky from the Isle of Mull.
First a nice size bite of the chocolate covered bacon. I wanted to get the chocolate melting in my mouth and release the smoky bacon flavors. Then a sip of the Ledaig Scotch. Yes, the peatiness of the Scotch pulled out the bacon flavor right away, neither overpowering the other, but rather enhancing the effect of each.
Then as the initial smoky, peaty, bacony flavors faded the dark chocolate notes remained along with some sweet chocolate flavor, combining with the lingering sweet sherry notes of the Scotch. Oh, yeah, I know how to pick ‘em.
In the end, the remaining peaty notes and subtle bacon flavors once again were more prounounced as the sweetness faded faster, thus leaving a lingering bacon peat combination in my mouth.
One of my favorite chocolate and wine pairings is merlot with a dark chocolate-covered raspberry cream.
Merlot, a red grape originating in France’s Bordeaux region, naturally produces tastes that are rich and round, loaded with raspberry and other red berry flavors, sometimes with hints of chocolate and sometimes vanilla.
Merlot is often overshadowed by a similar wine, the more popular cabernet sauvignon. The two share some similarities, but there differences, too. A merlot pairs very well with certain fruit creams and dark chocolates because it is typically softer and fruitier in both aroma and flavor than a cabernet.
Recently I enjoyed a Sonoma Vineyards 2007 Merlot. I paired it with a dark chocolate raspberry cream from a local chocolates shop that I adore. This wine was velvety smooth with mocha, raspberry, and cranberry notes coming through at the start and finishing with mocha and vanilla.
While I considered this a successful match up, the vanilla and oak flavors from the wine brought out some bitterness in the chocolate. Over the years, I have paired different merlot wines with chocolate raspberry creams and try to avoid wines that are aged in oak for this very reason.
After you‘ve eaten your grilled chicken breasts and pasta salad, try this pairing between 
